AMERICA AT WORK 

JOSEPH HUSBAND 




finss ~r ir 

Book 1_ 

Copyright N" 



COPSRIGHT DEPOSnv 



^V ^^^^9^ pntiUnti 



AMERICA AT WORK. With frontispiece. 
A YEAR IN A COAL MINE. With frontispiece, 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



AMERICA AT WORK 



AMERICA AT WORK 

BY 

JOSEPH HUSBAND 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1915 






COPYRIGHT, I915, BY JOSEPH HUSBAND 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November iqis 



Ci.A416454 



NOV 181blb 



TO 

THAT BEST OF FRIENDS 

CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND 



CONTENTS 



I. Semaphore . 
II. The Narrow House 

III. Vulcan 

IV. Leviathan 
V. High Tension 

VI. Fire-Damp 
VII. Skyscraper 
VIII. Dynamite 
IX. The Mills . 
X. Telephone 

XI. From a Thousand Hills 
XII. Concrete 



I 
II 
20 

32 
40 

49 
57 
65 
79 
89 
96 
03 



AMERICA AT WORK 



SEMAPHORE 

EVERY night, at exactly eight minutes 
past nine, the limited roars through 
the village. I can see it coming several 
miles away, its powerful headlight fingering 
rails and telegraph wires with a shimmer of 
light. Silently and slowly it seems to draw 
nearer; then suddenly, it is almost above 
me. A wild roar of steam and driving 
wheels, the wail of its hoarse whistle at the 
crossing, and then, looming black against 
the night sky, it smashes past, and in the 
swing of drivers and connecting rods I think 
of a greyhound, or a racehorse thundering 
the final stretch. High in the cab window 
a motionless figure peers ahead into the 
I 



AMERICA AT WORK 

night ; suddenly he is blackly silhouetted by 
the glare of the opened fire-door, and in the 
orange light I can see the fireman swing 
back and forth as he feeds his fire. The 
light burns against the flying steam and 
smoke above; then blackness — and now 
the white windows of the Pullmans flicker 
past, and through the swirl of dust and 
smoke I watch the two red lights sink down 
the track. 

Every time I see that black figure in the 
cab I wonder how far he can peer ahead into 
the night, and I wonder at the perfect faith 
that is his : faith in silent men who keep the 
semaphores lighted and true, and in those 
humble servants whose constant watchful- 
ness guards him from broken rail and loos- 
ened fish-plate. Last night I sat beside 
him. 

It was not my limited that I boarded, but 
a faster, greater engine that helps to rush 

2 



SEMAPHORE 

half across the continent a train before 
which all others wait and all tracks are 
cleared. I stood with the division superin- 
tendent on the platform of the little station 
where it must pause for water. Beyond the 
yardlights its song rose clear and vibrant. 
With a flare of lofty headlight and the grind 
of brakes it was beside us, steel lungs pant- 
ing heavily, a reek of oil sweating from 
heated sides. 

The engineer, a torch in his hand, swung 
down, and we shook hands before I climbed 
the iron rungs to the cab. From the high 
windows I watched him oil and stroke the 
sinews of his monster. Behind, on the top 
of the tender, the fireman was filling the 
tanks with a torrent of water. Then they 
joined me, and in the torchlight I saw the 
black studded end of the boiler, like a 
giant cask-head, a tangle of pipes across its 
face ; water-gauge and steam dial dimly il- 
3 



AMERICA ATLWORK 

lumined by shaded bulls-eyes. The engi- 
neer blew out the torch and climbed into 
his seat. Opposite him, I settled into mine, 
the fireman behind me. 

There was the thin piping of a whistle in 
the cab and the engineer slowly opened the 
throttle. We were off. Rumbling and sway- 
ing, we passed the upper windows of the 
station. Telegraphers in shirtsleeves were 
fingering their instruments beneath shaded 
lights. The chill of the frosty night air 
penetrated the cab, and I buttoned my coat 
about me and looked ahead into the dark- 
ness. We were gathering headway. A 
string of freight cars on a siding swept be- 
hind us; already the lights of the village 
were far behind. Ahead of the long body 
of the locomotive, extending incredibly be- 
yond the small front windows of the cab, 
the track, hardly visible in the ray of the 
headlight, terminated suddenly in the dark- 
4 



SEMAPHORE 

ness. The roar of drivers and machinery 
was deafening. From side to side the engine 
rocked Hke a plunging derehct. The crash- 
ing roar grew louder, loud beyond belief, 
and the rocking and trembling almost threw 
me from the seat. 

The fireman slid open the jaws of the 
fire-box, flooding the cab with light and 
heat. Within, the flame, white to pale daf- 
fodil in its intensity, twisted like streams of 
fluid in the draught. Behind the cab the 
black end of the tender rose high above 
my line of vision, rocking and swaying in 
contrary motion to the engine, like a bull- 
dog twisting on a stick. Balancing on the 
smooth steel floor, the fireman stoked his 
grate-bars, his shovel feeding spots where 
the coal was thinnest. Then darkness as he 
closed the doors with his foot. Only the two 
dim lights on gauge and indicator; and on 
each side, and above, the stars racing evenly 
S 



AMERICA AT WORK 

beside us. I looked down at the road-bed : it 
was flooding past us like a torrent. 

"Green." I caught the word above the 
tumult. 

"Green," echoed the fireman. 

Far ahead, four colored lights gleamed like 
gems against the sky. Two rubies below; 
above, another ruby and beside it the pale 
green of an emerald. The green light was in 
the upper right-hand corner of the square. 

"Seventy-five to eighty." The fireman 
shouted in my ear. 

"Block's clear. That green light gives us 
a clear track." 

Already the block semaphores were be- 
hind us. Blinded by the rush of air I tried 
to see the track ahead. Like a dark ava- 
lanche the world seemed pouring under our 
pilot, and beneath I felt the road-bed, at 
last in motion, shivering and swirling like a 
mill-race. From under the engine puffs of 
6 



SEMAPHORE 

steam shredded into fog-rift, white in the 
light from the round holes beneath the 
grate-bars. And through the two great cir- 
cles of light projected by them, as from a 
stereopticon, flickered embankments, tele- 
graph-poles, hills and houses, like a reeling 
cinematograph. 

"Green." 

"Green," came the confirmation. 

The fixed green star shone for a minute 
and flashed past. 

Faintly I heard the fireman at my ear. 

"Almost ninety." 

Long ago the headlight had become use- 
less except as a warning of our approach; 
we were past the farthest range of its illu- 
mination before the eye could discern what 
lay before us. Blind and helpless we tore 
on. Broken rail, a train on the crossing, or 
open switch, — we would never see it. But 
"green" shone the light, and wholly trust- 
7 



AMERICA AT WORK 

ing in the silent men who flashed to us their 
word of safety we never fahered. I thought 
of a stalled train that might lie sleeping on 
our rails. But "green" was the light, — 
their thin cry through the long night 
watches. 

The engineer, silent, his hand fingering 
throttle and air-brake, sat huddled high on 
his seat. Through his goggles he watched 
the blackness ahead. A brief second's time 
to set his brakes was all he asked. Far off in 
the great city the chief dispatcher was fol- 
lowing our flight mile by mile, block to 
block. Over the wires his voice and the 
voices of his helpers told the rapid story of 
our progress. In the lonely tower at the 
next curve some one would flash the green 
beacon to our straining eyes, and report us 
on our way. To him others were now re- 
porting, giving him the certain knowledge 
that our way was safe. Keepers of the 
8 



SEMAPHORE 

safety of our path ; how perfectly we trusted 
them; how great and unrewarded is their 
perfect service. 

I looked back. Behind, the Pullmans 
cast steady squares of light on the racing 
cut. Here was our freight. Sons of Mary; 
even more blindly they trusted, "peace- 
fully sleeping and unaware." 

Sons of Martha; they were beside me. 

"Green/' they chorused. 

Out of the night came the instant crash 
of the westbound express. With a blast of 
air and a slamming roar it seemed to brush 
us. It was gone. 

Through a sleeping village we tore on 
with a wild hoarse cry. Darkened windows 
flashed reflected light. A station platform 
whipped past our heels ; huddled groups of 
people pressed back against the building. 

"Green!" 

Like brilliant stars from a rocket gleamed 

9 



AMERICA AT WORK 

a constellation at a double crossing. Ruby 
drops of fire ; but the pale green light shone 
steadily above. The wheels hammered on 
the crossing. 

Thicker and thicker, like colored fire-flies, 
the switchlights tangled in a maze. We 
were entering the city. There was the con- 
stant rattle of switch points, and I felt the 
growing murmur of the streets. On either 
side buildings piled up in shapeless walls 
like a canyon ; there were sudden glimpses 
of interrupted streets, waiting street cars, 
and the glare of arc lights. We were slowing 
down. 

Cleveland. The station echoed with the 
iron coughing of engines. Men and women 
surged between waiting trains ; their voices 
mingled in the uproar. The departing, the 
returning; men staggering with bags and 
suitcases, women with little children in 
their arms. In the green star they trusted. 



II 

THE NARROW HOUSE 

THERE is a gardener in a little Massa- 
chusetts village who for a long life- 
time has devoted himself to the culture of 
roses; my friend in Elmira has cases upon 
cases of beautifully mounted butterflies, for 
fifteen years he has studied and collected 
them; both have become authorities, and 
so also has Wheelan, for the past twenty 
years a maker of caskets. 

Casket factories, no matter what we may 
feel to the contrary, are quite like any other 
manufacturing business that daily places 
its orders with a hundred different houses 
for its materials and supplies ; and so it was 
not curiosity that first took me there, but 
business, and on a business basis my ac- 
II 



AMERICA AT WORK 

quaintance with Wheelan was begun. In 
the street some boys were playing a noisy 
game and on an opposite corner a new 
house was building. I opened the heavy 
factory door and entered the dusty little 
office of the superintendent. Fine wood 
dust filled the air, and dust in a smooth, 
flourlike coating lay on the desk and the 
shelves. Wheelan was checking invoices 
and nodded to me between figures. I sat 
down on a chair by the door and waited. 
Tall, thin, stoop-shouldered, hands hard 
and twisted with labor; there is nothing 
distinctive about him except the pleasant 
blue eyes and a thin-set wrinkle or two 
about the small mouth, that mean perhaps 
a lingering sympathy with humor, perhaps 
a simple kindliness. 

"Do you want to go through the fac- 
tory?" he finally asked me, when business 
was done. I did and I did not, but I nodded 

12 



THE NARROW HOUSE 

and my acquiescence seemed to please 
him. 

The great main floor was cluttered with 
machinery, and the ceiling writhed, a wav- 
ing jungle of circling belts. The air was 
heavy with the dry, pungent smell of oak, 
streaked almost visibly, it seemed, with an 
occasional clean breath of fragrant cedar. 
Conversation was impossible above the 
screaming of the saws and the splintering 
stridor of the planers. Everywhere were 
trucks, high with piles of lumber, moving 
endlessly on through the great room, and 
all of the oak planks were cut to one or two 
general lengths: there were short ones, and 
there was a size that seemed about six feet, 
more or less. In the rear of the woodwork- 
ing room I stopped for a minute, and, ab- 
sorbed in the fascination of the thousand 
flying wheels and the perfect order and the 
system, forgot the need which created it. 
13 



AMERICA AT WORK 

Up in the comparative quiet of the sec- 
ond floor the piles of boards were taking 
shape. With the speed of long practice fifty 
hands glued, nailed, and fitted, and every- 
where against the walls and between the 
work-tables stood shallow oak and cedar 
boxes. How many there were! And yet, 
each day a hundred were trundled into 
waiting freight cars. 

There was a smell of paint and varnish in 
the next rooms. Piled high against the walls 
were a thousand little boxes. How brief is 
life ! With broad brushes the painters 
spread the smooth, white paint. How very 
small were they of the great pile in the 
corner. 

"Something pretty swell in Circassian 
walnut," said Wheelan; "and those, they're 
real mahogany, the genuine, solid stufi^." 

He patted the sleek side of a great chest. 
"First-class piano finish. That's my own 
14 



THE NARROW HOUSE 

design, those there, side lets down and 
makes a divan — two pillows to match. 
Looks real natural-like." 

I looked inside the unfinished case. 

"No, there is n't any finish there. No 
one sees that. We leave the bottoms and 
the insides rough." 

Beyond, in the temporary storerooms, 
were hundreds of long boxes of various 
shapes and colors, piled one above the 
other in rows, like canoes in a boathouse. 

"That natural-shaped kind," Wheelan 
said, pointing to a great section filled with 
the traditional-shaped coffins, all painted 
a lustrous imitation black walnut, "that's 
the kind the soldiers and sailors use. Farm- 
ers like 'em, too — we ship lots up to Min- 
nesota and the Dakotas." 

"Cheap, too," he continued, "but those 
fine wood ones, they're my real delight. 
I've got up three original designs myself — 
IS 



AMERICA AT WORK 

all turned out popular, too. Why, Richard 
Hippin, you know the name, of course, used 
that style X5 with the hand-carved claw 
feet." 

"How long will they last, those cheap 
ones.?" Then, almost before I finished my 
question, I suddenly realized how com- 
pletely a long-cherished belief had been 
torn from me, and a new realization as in- 
stantly replaced it. A few months, or a few 
years, what did it matter. 

"Oh, the best of them go pretty quick, I 
suppose. Them? Well, a year. But they're 
not put so well together. These swell ones 
ought to last for five or perhaps ten years. 
Then, if there's a copper lining — " 

I moved away to look at an oak box, 
elaborately carved and stained a shiny, 
brilliant green. It is a very familiar finish, 
but I could think only of the chairs and 
tables on a hotel roof-garden, where there 
16 



THE NARROW HOUSE 

is a gay little orchestra that is still playing, 
no matter how late you stay. They are 
finished in the same stain. 

At the end of a long high room ten young 
women were sewing white lilies of the valley 
on filmy shrouds. Outside there was sun- 
shine and the noise of the street; they 
looked up when we entered, smiling and 
chatting over their work. They were very 
gay and their eyes seemed filled with 
thoughts far away from white silk and 
shapeless garments. 

A man was gluing a strip of thick, black 
cloth on the side of a casket, smoothing it 
until there was no crease, then heating it 
with a jet of puffy steam to give it a 
gloss. 

"How's that for style?" said Wheelan. 
"It's so dignified and yet it ain't cheap- 
looking, even if it is sort of plain. Put on 
silver handles and a nice plate and you get 
17 



AMERICA AT WORK 

something that goes into the very best 
houses." 

Satin and fine cloth were the Hnings, but 
beneath the rich textures the workmen were 
stuffing excelsior. A young woman with a 
mountainous plenitude of immaculate saf- 
fron hair was tacking gimp along the edges. 
She was whistling a snatch from '*The 
Chocolate Soldier." 

Down again, on a lower floor, the care- 
fully wrapped caskets were being cased in 
the familiar rough boxes. 

"It's nice work," said Wheelan, "and 
there's always a chance to make improve- 
ments. Of course there are regular lines you 
have to follow, but if a man's got his heart 
in the work, he can show himself." 

It was a long walk to the car, and on the 

way I thought of an Eastern legend that I 

once heard. It told of a wise and godly man, 

who, in a vision, saw himself sitting on the 

i8 



THE NARROW HOUSE 

highest peak of the Himalayas. An angel, 
descending, touched the peak with his 
wing and a single grain of sand fell into the 
abyss below. "Once in a thousand years," 
said the angel, "I brush a grain of sand 
from this lofty peak. In time I will level it 
to the plain, — and yet eternity is but be- 
gun." And then I thought of another who 
said so simply: "All is vanity." 



Ill 

VULCAN 

TEN years ago, the low dunes, a des- 
ert of yellow sand and beach-grass, 
stretched unbroken from the foot of Lake 
Michigan south to the headwaters of the 
Kankakee. Since the early days when the 
good Father Marquette was paddled slowly 
around the curving beach line to die finally 
on the Michigan shore, they have remained 
— a desert of soft colors in the summer, a 
sleet-swept tract in winter. A few miles 
north, on the western edge of the lake, a 
vast city, in a single century, was born and 
thrust its towers high against the horizon. 
Then, suddenly, came an instant trans- 
formation. Other cities, filled with the men 
of every nation, flattened the dunes into 
20 



VULCAN 

level streets. Along the lake shore strange 
structures of steel, reeking with smoke and 
blackness, streaked the sky with a cloud by 
day and a glare of furnaces by night. From 
a hundred meshing tracks the clamor of lo- 
comotives rose above the murmur of the 
city's streets. Steel, Vulcan, had usurped 
the wastes of sand and wiry beach-grass. 
Progress and industry stained the blue 
Indiana sky with the smoke of a thousand 
chimneys. 

The long concrete slip slashed the beach 
lines. Beyond its mouth the lake, a brilliant 
ultramarine, pounded in before the north 
wind; but inside, the quiet water was tawny 
with riled sand and the stain of iron. 
Against the nearest dock an ore steamer 
rested its long, low body beneath the 
shadow of a steel trestle that reached out, 
far above it. With sudden motion a grab- 
bucket swung down on slender cables from 

21 



AMERICA AT WORK 

the trestle and disappeared in the waist of 
the ship. In an instant it Hfted on tight- 
ened cables, heavy with ore, and swung 
ashore with grinding vibration of wheels 
and electric motors, to drop its contents on 
the ore pile that ran parallel with the dock. 
Like a mountain range the vermilion peaks 
of ore piled up above me, from the mouth of 
the harbor far inland, so high that behind 
them only the tops of the tallest furnaces 
appeared against the sky. From the scarred 
hills of northern Minnesota, down the 
length of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, 
other steamers were bringing fresh food for 
the hungry furnaces. The reverberation of 
the mills rose sharp above the even cadence 
of the surf. 

Like strange Martian creatures the blast 
furnaces squatted beyond the ore piles. 
Ample-waisted, they flanked them, and be- 
tween their huge structures the long row 

22 



VULCAN 

of "stoves/' high as modest skyscrapers, 
Hfted their slender domes in even line. Be- 
yond, a vast pile of coal reared black against 
white heaps of broken limestone. 

Inside the steel structure which inclosed 
the furnace a score of blackened, half-naked 
men were moulding huge troughs of sand 
to receive the surplus iron which would 
pour forth when later they "cast the fur- 
nace." Hot, and enormous in girth, the 
furnace filled the building. Inside, under 
forced draught, and at a temperature of 
thirty-five hundred degrees, layers of coke, 
limestone, and iron ore were undergoing 
their vital transformation. By the heat of 
the consuming coke the iron was filtering 
down in liquid flood, purified and refined 
by the flux of melted limestone. 

From beneath the furnace a squat lo- 
comotive dragged a string of curious cars 
across a desolate field to the steel mills. 
23 



AMERICA AT WORK 

On low trucks the ladles, like inverted 
cones, carried the liquid metal, — so hot 
that four hours might elapse before it so- 
lidified. 

In the twilight of a long corrugated build- 
ing the brick ovens of the open hearths 
stretched away into almost indefinable dis- 
tance. Heat, fresh consuming heat, choked 
the air. And from chinks in the hearths 
a white light of indescribable intensity 
pierced my eyeballs. 

The trainload of molten metal had ar- 
rived before us. Already a big-lipped ladle 
had been dragged by an electric engine 
into the gloom of the building, and up to 
the hearth-mouth. 

The doors of the hearth were thrown 
suddenly open. A blinding whiteness 
streaked with saffron, and heat almost be- 
yond endurance, made me draw back be- 
hind a column. A workman thrust a pair 
24 



VULCAN 

of deep-blue glasses in my hand. Slowly 
the great ladle bent forward. From its 
spout a trickle of fluid iron poured faster 
and faster until the white cascade, at full 
flood, seethed into the hearth-bath. A 
shower of sparks, strange flowery pyrotech- 
nics, shot high into the gloom. Through 
the blue glass I peered into the hearth. Like 
an infernal lake it swirled and eddied, a 
whirlpool of incandescent flame. Leaping 
tongues of pink and lavender danced in the 
blue darkness. Shielding their goggled faces 
from the heat, the workmen cast lumps 
of rich ore into the hearth-mouth, — black 
silhouettes of men against the blue glare of 
an uncanny firelight. 

Behind the long row of open hearths huge 
cranes rumbled back and forth on their 
tracks beneath the roof, the operators, con- 
cealed somewhere on their rivet-studded 
frames, directing the swinging cables that 
25 



AMERICA AT WORK 

lifted and carried weights inconceivable. 
High in the dark vault a great crane swung 
over us. 

** They 're going to tap a heat/' shouted 
the assistant superintendent in my ear, his 
words sounding faint and fragmentary 
above the steady roar that filled the build- 
ing. 

On the floor below, an electric motor 
trundled an empty ladle into place beneath 
the rear of one of the hearths. 

Then from the hearth, with a mad daze 
of brilliancy, fifty-six tons of molten steel 
began to disgorge itself. Once more I put 
on the blue glasses. Against the deep purple 
gloom of the building the stream of metal 
shot forward and bent in the soft curve of 
running water. Like pale moonbeams the 
sunlight rays from glassless windows pierced 
the darkness, and sharp across them leaped 
the avalanche of steel, a flood of brilliant 
26 



VULCAN 

• 

pink and blue that showered the room with 
a constellation of falling stars. 

For a brief minute I took off the glasses. 
In the terrible glare of light all background 
disappeared. Gone were the dark shapes 
of the toilers beneath; gone the uncanny 
moonlight. Yellow, tawny, brilliant as the 
contact of an electric arc, the swirling metal 
scorched my vision. A halo of flame seemed 
to envelop the ladle. 

It was full. Through the glass, again, 
it boiled soapy and seething, the crest of 
its wave-tossed surface crimson and blue. 
Slowly from the crane above, two great 
hooks, like bent fingers, caught the handles 
on its sides, lifted it, and with a hail of 
sparks and a glare of heat against our faces, 
swung it far above us. Then, with grinding 
reverberation, it moved past, far down the 
long gallery, to be poured into ingots in the 
waiting moulds. 

27 



AMERICA AT WORK 

In the "blooming mill" there was the 
continuous rumble of mighty thunder. 
Cherry-red against the darkness, the incan- 
descent ingots of steel shot back and forth 
between giant fingers that pressed and 
worked them at every passing; for like 
dough that must be kneaded to acquire a 
certain consistency, steel must be worked 
to obtain those qualities which its ultimate 
purpose will demand. 

Into a great plank a hundred feet long 
the solid ingot flattened resistlessly be- 
tween the stroking rollers. Then, finished, 
it shot abruptly beneath a knife that 
snipped it lightly into even bars of manage- 
able weight. 

In the structural mill the billets of steel, 
still malleable with glowing heat, rumbled 
noisily back and forth on the metal floor, 
propelled invisibly by countless whirling 
rollers that shot them with incredible speed 
28 



VULCAN 

and certainty of direction. As I looked 
down the length of the gloomy building, the 
glare of the moving bars of metal contrasted 
so sharply with the black floor that they 
alone were visible, like strange illuminated 
bodies that floated and swam on a sea of 
inky water. Through devious channels they 
navigated, palpably changing, narrowing, 
lengthening, until at last, in the far end of 
the building, the finished angle-bar or I- 
beam was deposited, a perfect thing, of 
cooling lead-gray steel. 

And still more buildings; parallel with 
each other; equally vast; filled with dark- 
ness and tumult, the shifting shapes of 
giant roof-hung cranes, and the red glow of 
heated metal. Like paste from a tube, a 
thin rope of white-hot steel emerged from a 
shapeless machine that crouched squat on 
the iron floor, and with a breath of heat 
disappeared in the breast of another mon- 
29 



AMERICA AT WORK 

ster that trembled with the reverberation 
of a hundred hammers. And faster than 
the hand of my watch could count the sec- 
onds, a hail of railroad spikes, still glowing, 
leaped finished from its thundering womb. 
Bolts, spikes, nuts, and rivets, madly, with 
the tumult of clashing steel, poured finished 
from the vitals of the uncouth machines. 

Plates of steel for the flanks of ships 
which will some day transport the wares 
of a trading world. Rails and spikes to carry 
high over mountain passes the flitting 
trains that make distant cities one. Bolt, 
rivet, and girder for the towering building. 
Steel, steel for its multifold destinies, here 
it is born in heat and labor. Steel for an 
age of steel. 

In the twilight of the late summer after- 
noon the world seemed strangely quiet and 
at peace. Sharp and black against the yel- 
low sky the roofs and stacks of the mills 
30 



VULCAN 

rose like the sky-line of a ruined city ; and 
in an occasional opening the blue lake 
gleamed with the brilliant light of sapphire. 
In the gathering darkness electric lights 
began to glimmer. Flares of dull-red gas- 
flame burst out like volcanoes and suddenly 
were gone. 

Loud and metallic a hurdy-gurdy lifted 
the rippling cadence of a Neapolitan air 
in a distant street. Beyond the mill-yard 
gates the saloon windows shone gayly and 
arc lights trembled into life. Day was over. 



IV 

LEVIATHAN 

A COLD northeast wind had come up 
from the sea, and before it the fog 
was flying in great, torn clouds of mist, like 
rifted smoke. Above the deck of the yacht 
it billowed past the thin slant masts, and at 
times, when it opened a little, the sun, a pale 
yellow disk, shone weakly for a minute until 
another gust of fog closed in before it. Aft, 
the propellers combed out on the pitching 
green surface of the sea a channel of soapy 
white, that ended not many yards astern, 
where fog and water met. 

I was standing on the forward deck, my 

face dripping with moisture and a thousand 

little beads of mist clinging like dew to my 

clothes. The air was heavy with the smell 

32 



f LEVIATHAN 

of green salt water, borne strong on the rising 
breeze, and the smell of the ship, that inde- 
finable blend of odors exhaled from cabin, 
galley, and engine-room. From below decks 
came the murmur of the engines, and 
from beneath the bows, where her sharp 
prow carried a white bone in its teeth, 
the noise of rushing water was flung back 
on the wind. Aft, in the shelter of the 
deck-houses, a white- jacketed Japanese was 
passing sandwiches to the ladies. 

The first mate, who stood beside me, 
peered up into the fog. 

"Rotting out a bit," he said; "guess 
there's a chance it'll burn off by noon. 
Won't see much of the launching if it don't." 

As he spoke, there was a sudden gap in 
the flying mist and from a square of blue the 
sun shone brightly for a minute. From the 
port bow came the soft, low tolling of a bell 
buoy, and as the fog grew weaker it seemed 
33 



AMERICA AT WORK 

to start toward us out of the mist, a swing- 
ing tripod of blackened iron, the water 
swashing and surging on its circular base as 
it careened in the heaving sea. As the yacht 
cut past it, the bell for an instant struck 
loud and clear, and then grew faint and was 
gone as we swept it far behind. 

An hour later the fog had lifted and the 
last white shreds were flying inland over the 
hills. From the open sea the wind came cold 
and clear, and under the brilliant sunlight 
the water sparkled a vivid blue, broken by 
bands of green. On our starboard side the 
coast-line pressed out against the water, 
rocks and the green of trees dark against the 
pale horizon. In a sweeping curve the yacht 
swept past a dipping spar buoy, from which 
a pair of gray gulls rose with screaming pro- 
tests and headed for the land. 

We were all on the forward deck now, 
watching the houses of the town and trying 
34 



LEVIATHAN 

to mark the shipyards. Aloft, the crew were 
dressing the yacht in a riot of signals; 
strings of yellow, red, and blue bunting 
flung in flying festoons from every spar tip, 
each flag snapping free in the steady breeze. 
The houses of the town grew larger; two 
church spires appeared, thin and lofty 
against the sky, and a long streak of yellow, 
on a little headland, evolved into a sprawl- 
ing summer hotel perched high above the 
breakwater. 

"There she is!" some one shouted. 

High above the houses by the water's 
edge a black bulk loomed upward. There 
were masts above ; masts and the flutter of 
flying flags. It was the new ship upon the 
ways. 

The harbor was cluttered with vessels. 

A dozen dingy schooners, like shabby gulls, 

swung at anchor against the tide. Tugs and 

fishing-boats swarmed in a wild disorder. 

35 



AMERICA AT WORK 

White excursion steamers, their decks slant- 
ing with passengers crowded on the shore 
rail, lumbered up and down the harbor, 
paddle-wheels frothing against their sides. 
Power dories and boats and launches sput- 
tered recklessly back and forth, their un- 
muffled engines exploding in irregular vol- 
leys as they half swamped in the swell from 
every passing boat. From the shore came 
the intermittent blare of a brass band ; now 
a few clear notes and then a silence as the 
music was blown back by the breeze. And 
above all the noisy uproar of the harbor, the 
great, six-masted schooner lifted its smooth, 
black sides from the shingled buildings that 
seemed to cling like barnacles to its keel. 

From the shore came the sharp strokes 
of axes and hammers. A police-boat offi- 
ciously rocked past us. " Keep back of the 
lines," shouted an excited man through a 
megaphone ; " she '11 swing this way." Grad- 

36 



LEVIATHAN 

ually the tugs and steamers drew back into 
line; before them a great square of open 
water shimmered in the sunlight. 

"She's off!" shouted the mate. 

Motionless the great ship seemed to cling 
to the ways. There was a lull in the wind 
and from her after-deck came a few blar- 
ing bars of "The Star-Spangled Banner." 
Above the heads of the players an American 
flag lazily coiled and blew open from the 
peak. 

No one but the mate saw her start, but 
suddenly I realized that with constantly in- 
creasing speed the towering ship was gliding 
down the ways to the water's edge. A roar 
of many voices, the brazen clamor of the 
band, shrieking whistles, and the detona- 
tions of yachts' cannon seemed to quicken 
her speed. From the shadow of the smooth, 
straight keel puffs of gray smoke fanned up 
against her sides, for the friction had ignited 
37 



AMERICA AT WORK 

the grease-soaked blocks beneath her. Fast- 
er and faster, stern foremost, she swept to 
the sea. With a dull roar she reached it and, 
half submerged by her plunge, the stern 
buried itself in the water and a white wave 
curled up around it. Like a swimmer breast- 
ing the surf she reared up again, and again 
plunged with a pitching motion; again and 
again, each one growing fainter, until at 
last she rode smoothly, in the middle of 
the harbor, her long black body swinging 
against her anchor chains and the two tugs 
which held her. 

The launching was over and another ship 
had begun her brave life. Perhaps she 
might be the last giant of her kind. Steel 
plates and smoking funnels have replaced 
stout oak and widespread canvas. I thought 
of the days when every harbor was a ship- 
yard, when great clippers raced back with 
tea-packed holds on record runs from 

38 



LEVIATHAN 

Shanghai and Hongkong to New York ; rec- 
ords that stand to-day. 

Outside of the harbor we met a dingy 
tramp steamer, light-laden, her rusty plates 
unpainted, her propeller threshing half 
above sea. From her black funnel a cloud 
of smoke trailed far astern. Here was the 
conqueror. 

Two years later I read of the abandon- 
ment of that great vessel I had seen first 
greet the sea. She was impracticable, they 
said; too many men were needed to work 
her sails ; soon the great masts were to fall, 
and the decapitated hulk, filled with oil, was 
to be towed by tug from port to port. 



HIGH TENSION 



THE purple blackness of the sky was 
misted with a myriad stars, faint 
coruscations which illuminated the night 
with a dim radiance. Against the stars rose 
the black silhouettes of the hills, and be- 
tween them the broad river was faintly 
visible, an expanse of silent blackness that 
glistened here and there like polished mar- 
ble in the starlight. 

The watchman came limping down the 
parapet, his lame foot scraping on the con- 
crete floor. 

"Better take a look at the dam," he 
shouted; "ain't often you see water going 
over this time of year." 

Like a half-strung bow the long dam 
40 



HIGH TENSION 

curves its slanting concrete wall from cliff 
to cliff across the valley. At one end, piled 
up against its smooth white face in an angle 
with the cliff, the power house braces its 
broad back squarely against it : a great con- 
crete building, its topmost story alone ap- 
pearing above the crest of the dam. And 
through the latticed grills, from the deep 
reservoir of the valley above, the silent 
water discharges, whirling, reeling, and 
staggering under the mighty pressure, into 
the deep-lying turbine chambers, whence it 
finally emerges in a roaring but shattered 
torrent from the draft tubes beneath the 
firm-planted feet of the building. 

In the dim starlight and the gleam of the 
lantern, the river stretched limitless in the 
darkness, but following the edge of the dam, 
the smooth surface seemed ripped open as 
though by a keen blade, and a long curl of 
foaming white marked where the crowding 
41 



AMERICA AT WORK 

water leaped its barrier and fell gleaming to 
the bed of the river below. 

"Do you have much trouble with the ice 
in winter?" I asked, as the watchman stood 
with his hand on the door which leads from 
the dam into the power house. 

"No, it ain't so bad. Pretty seldom that 
the ice gets bad in the forebay." In ex- 
planation he waved his arm at the basin 
directly behind the power house. "It's all 
protected with a boom of logs so that the 
ice and floating stuff won't jam up against 
the grills. It's down there in the power 
house where they have the trouble; there 
and out on the transmission lines." 

For a minute we stood in the doorway. 
As though wiped clean from the sky the 
stars along the horizon had disappeared and 
only above were they still shining clearly. 
Then for a second distant lightning flick- 
ered behind the hills, sharply defining 
42 



HIGH TENSION 

the outline of trees against a cumulus of 
clouds. 

"Guess you'll see some fun if you stay 
late enough to-night; there's a storm up 
river, — that's where three of our trans- 
mission lines go, up to Bolton." He pushed 
the door open and we entered the top floor 
of the power house. On a steady wave of 
heated air came the roar of machinery and 
smell of oil. A long flight of stairs, beyond 
another door, led sharply down between 
smooth, white walls of concrete to several 
floors below. Halfway down, the lights on a 
landing shone brightly, and at the foot a 
glare of light sharply outlined the square 
opening to the stair well. 

From the landing I glanced about me. A 
long room brilliantly lighted occupied the 
entire floor of the building. Down the cen- 
ter and along the walls extended rows of 
stone shelves and alcoves. Here were the 
43 



AMERICA AT WORK 

giant oil switches which opened or closed at 
the touch of the operator on the switch- 
board gallery on a floor below, loading or 
clearing the transmission lines of an electric 
current sufficient to light and turn the 
wheels of distant cities. On shelves gleamed 
the heavy copper bus bars, switch sidings 
where the current pulsed from the genera- 
tors and without a pause surged out a hun- 
dred miles. 

"Ain't no place to visit," said the watch- 
man. "There's seventy thousand volts on 
them bars, an' if you get too near it will 
jump at you; enough to kill an elephant, 
an' you'd never know what hit you." 

At the foot of the stairs the air fanned 
hot in our faces and the scream of the gen- 
erators rose shrill and deafening. We were 
standing on the switchboard gallery, a 
curved balcony which clung to the wall of 
the generator room twenty feet above the 
44 



HIGH TENSION 

floor and midway to the roof. Below in a 
long line the great generators filled the 
smooth stone floor. 

"Well, guess I'll have to leave you," said 
the watchman. "Through for the night. 
Shake hands with Mr. Fogarty, he's night 
operator, he'll show you the rest." 

The night operator, a spare young man 
in clean overalls and a blue shirt, led me 
to a chair beside his table. 

"Here's where we direct things," he ex- 
plained, "kind of hard to hear if you are n't 
used to the noise, so you can watch and I '11 
tell you all I can. There's a bad electric 
storm up the valley and we are liable to be 
pretty busy here for a few hours." 

Along the back of the gallery a multitude 
of white-faced dials with quivering indica- 
tors were set in high panels of marble, be- 
low them the handles of the controlling 
switches. 

45 



AMERICA AT WORK 

There was a sudden, palpitating light be- 
yond the windows and fast behind it a rend- 
ing crash of thunder like the snap of an iron 
girder. At the same minute the telephone 
in a booth beside the switchboard rang 
shrilly. 

''Lightning struck one of our transmis- 
sion towers about thirty miles from here!" 
shouted the operator as he dashed out of the 
booth and began to work at the switch- 
board. "I'm cutting out that line so that 
the repair crew on the section can straighten 
things out." 

He was telephoning again, telling his men 
that the line was dead and safe. Outside, 
the storm was breaking in full force, and 
the trembling light through the tall win- 
dows disclosed the black hills and the river 
like the reeling film of a cinematograph. A 
blinding flare seemed to blast the windows 
and with it came a terrific crash of thunder. 

46 



HIGH TENSION 

"Another line's gone/' he shouted; "that 
one hit mighty near here. Did you hear it 
scream?" On the board there was a flick- 
ering of the needles on several of the dials. 
Again came the telephone ; a minute at the 
board, and again he answered. "We're in 
bad to-night," he called to me. "This has 
n't left me much to work with, but we've 
got to keep things going." 

From far below, and at times rising above 
the note of the generator, came a deep 
booming, a bass note that tuned with the 
wilder song of the machines: it was the 
roar of the tailraces where the water thun- 
dered down from the turbine chambers 
through the draft tubes to the bed of the 
river. 

For a long hour the operator moved 
slowly back and forth before the switch- 
board. Now and then the telephone jingled 
and short messages were given and re- 

47 



AMERICA AT WORK 

ceived. Over his shoulder he threw to me 
occasional explanations, strange techni- 
cal sentences filled with incomprehensible 
phrases: ^yiir^v - ^scr-pB^ ^, electrolytic arrest- 
ers, picking phases, and getting the gen- 
erators in step again. Then came the mes- 
sage that repairs on one of the sections had 
been made. 

The strain was over and he dropped 
limply in a chair beside me. 

For a minute I watched him. "Mighty 
little the people in the cities know," I said, 
"when things go wrong." 

He laughed a little. "No, and, friend, 
to-night's nothing; why, some nights we 
have trouble." 



VI 

FIRE-DAMP 

IN the soft, yellow glow of his safety- 
lamp, Campbell peered into the black- 
ness of the tunnel. On either side a long row 
of props, chalked with fungus growth, and 
bending under the weight of the low roof, 
stretched out beyond the dim lamplight and 
disappeared, and behind them the rough 
walls of coal glistened like broken glass. 
There was no sound, but the steady pres- 
sure of the air current, dry and pungent, 
seemed to carry a vibration that sang 
softly in his ears. Then from behind him 
came the noise of feet, clumping over the 
coal-strewn floor of the tunnel. 

"Any gas in Number Six.?'' Campbell 
shouted, without turning his head. The 
49 



AMERICA AT WORK 

words were sharp and clear, but there was 
no echo. Still peering ahead into the black- 
ness he waited until the sound of the man's 
feet grew louder, and a faint increase in the 
yellow haze of light told him he was stand- 
ing beside him. 

"No, it's all clear in Six." There was 
an uneasiness in the voice, and Campbell 
turned and looked down into the sharp, 
thin face of the mine inspector. 

"Well, let's go ahead." Slowly they 
walked into the blackness, over the uneven 
floor, and slowly as they advanced the faint 
light of their lamps, for the brief moment of 
their passing, disclosed the gleaming walls 
of the tunnel, the low roof, the track clut- 
tered with broken coal, and monotonous 
files of white-splashed timbers that melted 
into blackness behind them. 

"She's back in Paris entry," said Camp- 
bell. He was a large-framed man with fair, 
SO 



FIRE-DAMP 

uncut hair that curled shghtly beneath the 
bottom of his blackened pit cap ; over his 
strong, white teeth a drooping yellow mus- 
tache, heavy with coal dust, half hid deep- 
creased lines about his mouth. Twice in the 
three long months that had just passed 
"She" had swept resistless through the 
miles of tunnels, — a wave of rending and 
scorching flame, which burst into being 
when perhaps some latent spark from the 
fire which had long ago closed the mine, or a 
defective gauze in a safety lamp, had ig- 
nited the explosive mixture of air and gas 
which completely filled the "workings." 
To them "She" was a creature, an inde- 
scribable something, a terrible personifica- 
tion of death and destruction; and in the 
silent places of their hearts they feared her. 
"She ain't going to let go again," said 
Campbell. " It was n't fire set her off 
last time. It was Johnny Cashay's lamp 
SI 



AMERICA AT WORK 

touched her off. There must have been a 
hole somewhere in the gauze." 

"Sam!" They stopped and Hstened, and 
Campbell moistened his finger and held it 
high above his head, close under the roof. 

"The air's moving good; Five will be 
clear of gas in an hour, and we can explore 
up to Four. Do you smell nothing ? " They 
sniffed the dry air which blew softly past 
them. 

"I thought I smelled smoke," said 
Campbell. For a second they were silent. 

" Don't get it," the other man answered. 

Ten feet ahead of them lay a dinner 
bucket beside the rails, where, long ago, 
on the night of the fire, some miner had 
dropped it in his flight. The cover had 
fallen off, and the half-spilled contents 
was beaded with the white crust of decay. 
Campbell kicked it with his foot, and the 
mass rolled out into the ditch. 
52 



FIRE-DAMP 

"Never did get to eat his banana/' he 
said. 

At regular intervals they passed the 
black openings of tunnels that turned off 
from the main entry. Once they walked a 
few yards up into one of the cross tunnels, 
but a sharp pointing of the tiny yellow 
flames in their safety lamps warned them 
of the presence of gas, and they stumbled 
back to the main track and continued. 

"What's the time?" Sam fumbled in his 
pocket, and distinctly they heard the clear, 
metallic ticking of the watch, as he held it 
up in the lamplight. 

"Pretty near noon." 

"We'll go back, I reckon. Can't go much 
further now, but by two the air ought to 
clear it out enough so we can get to the 
heading." 

For ten minutes they tramped silently 
back along the rough track, and then turned 
S3 



AMERICA AT WORK 

sharply to the right. One hundred feet be- 
yond was the foot of the hoisting shaft. 
For a brief second they stood and sniffed 
the air. 

Suddenly, far off, like distant thunder, 
came a sound from the recesses of the mine. 

"My God!" screamed Campbell, "she's 
let go!" 

In a panic of fear they dashed a few yards 
into the cross cut, and flung themselves, 
their faces buried in their arms, on the tun- 
nel floor. Steady and unwinking one of the 
safety lamps gleamed where it had fallen. 
A heavy vibration trembled on the air. 
The far-off thunder boomed louder and 
nearer; a wild tumult of sound shrieked 
down the entry; and a cyclone blast of 
wind, black with its pall of coal dust, spun 
them like dead leaves far into the cross cut. 
Fast on the wind, like an unleashing of 
Hell, came a wave of flame, blanketed in 
54 



FIRE-DAMP 

pitchy smoke: flame incandescent with 
light and heat: flame that scorched the 
gleaming walls of coal into blackened coke, 
and brushing with its fiery touch the oak 
beams and props, blackened and charred 
them in the brief moment of its flight. 

From the distant entries through which 
it had passed the roar of the falling roof 
was lost in the thunder of the flame wave, 
as it hurled itself on its course through the 
mine galleries to the shaft mouth. 

In the blackness and sudden silence 
that followed, Campbell lifted himself to 
his knees. The lamps were extinguished; 
and the burned-out air seemed thick with 
intense heat. Groping in the blackness he 
crawled until he encountered the walls of 
the cross cut, and then, turning, followed 
it, reaching out to touch it after each con- 
vulsive effort. Once he stopped for a long 
minute; it was Sam, and he knew that he 
55 



AMERICA AT WORK 

was dead. A sudden animal fear of death, a 
tremendous mustering of every nerve and 
sinew to resist, seized him. In the vitiated 
atmosphere and in utter blackness he con- 
tinued. Something seemed to flicker like 
electric flashes before his eyes, and softly he 
sank down between the rails. For in from 
the far tunnels of the mine poured the poi- 
sonous after-damp: the deadly gas which 
follows an explosion. 



VII 

SKYSCRAPER 

THE old brick building had vanished 
before the wreckers in a cloud of 
broken brick and plaster. From my win- 
dow I could look down into the cavity 
which had held it. Already the muddy 
floor was dotted with the toadstool tents of 
the excavators, and day and night unceas- 
ingly wagon-loads of sticky clay and mud 
dragged up the incline to the street. Far 
down in the stifling air of the caissons the 
concrete roots were being planted, tied with 
cement and steel to the very core of the 
world. 

The foundations were finished and the 
first thin steel columns stretched upward. 
In a day they multiplied. A hundred black 
57 



AMERICA AT WORK 

shoots pierced the soil ; a hundred sprouting 
shoots, in even rows, Hke a well-planted 
garden. In ordered plan the crossbeams fell 
into their places, and the great lattice of 
the substructure shaped itself. Then, above 
the uproar and vibration of the street, rose 
the angry clatter of the pneumatic riveters, 
steel against steel in a shattering reverbera- 
tion. 

With incredible rapidity the gaunt frame 
piled upward. On the topmost story the 
derricks crouched like giant spiders, thin 
legs firmly braced against post and I-beam, 
casting their threads of steel softly to the 
distant street to take a dozen tons of girders 
in their grasp and lift them, gently turning, 
to the top. Against the pale sky the black 
ribs of the building surged higher. As 
through prison bars I saw the distant blue 
of the harbor; the familiar view had van- 
ished; a miracle had transformed it. Un- 
S8 



SKYSCRAPER 

tiring, hour after hour, the derricks lifted 
bales of steel to swing into their destined 
place; and as each new story was bolted 
down the derricks lifted themselves heavily 
to the new level, clean cut against the sky, 
above the highest towers of the city. 

Like beetles the steel-workers clambered 
surefooted over the empty frame. Far out 
on the end of narrow beams they hung 
above the void ; on the tops of slender col- 
umns they clung, waiting to swing into 
place a ton of steel. Braced against nothing 
but empty space, they pounded red-hot 
rivets with their clattering hammers; like 
flies they caught the slim-spun threads of 
the derricks and swung up to some inac- 
cessible height. On flimsy platforms the 
glow of their forges blinked red in the twi- 
light. 

I am thinking also of other workers: of 
men who measured this tall tower on their 
59 



AMERICA AT WORK 

slide-rules, of grimy workers who followed 
their mystic blue-prints and made each 
piece with such fine precision that the great 
masses of steel fell softly into their final 
place with hairbreadth accuracy, rivet-hole 
to rivet-hole, and tongue in groove. Engi- 
neers, who foresaw each bolt and fitted so 
perfectly mass on mass with only imagina- 
tion and their books of figures to guide them ; 
workers in the steel mills of the distant city 
who moulded each beam and pillar to go 
together like a watch, — theirs is the silent 
forgotten labor! 

Day faded in fog and darkness. Black- 
blurred, the frame of the skyscraper rose in 
the gray of the mist and the shadow of the 
night. Through the tangle of its skeleton 
frame the flaming red and yellow of an elec- 
tric sign spattered a trail of jeweled fire 
against the sky. Another, with a flash of 
myriad color, shone and was gone. Far^ 
60 



SKYSCRAPER 

down in the streets the glare of automobile 
lights stroked the gleaming blackness of the 
pavement. From surrounding buildings the 
glitter of countless windows shone brightly 
through the mist. But high above the fire- 
fly activity of the city the black frame of 
the skyscraper touched the starless sky. 
Like beacon fires the forges of the workers 
glowed intermittently, panting breaths of 
red, half smothered in the approaching 
night. In graceful curves, like tiny comets, 
the heated rivets, tossed from forge to the 
waiting bucket of the riveter, gleamed yel- 
low and vanished. I thought of Whistler's 
nocturnes ; of the fireworks at Cremorne. 

I stood on the rough staging of the top 
floor of the tower. Above, the light steel 
ribs of the dome met in a heavy rosette from 
which a flagpole pointed to the drifting 
clouds. Standing on its base a man was 
arranging the tackle which would lift him 
6i 



AMERICA AT WORK 

up the slender mast^ to paint it, or gild the 
ball at its tip. He saw me and leaned down. 

"Come up/' he shouted. 

I climbed the ladder and, with his arm 
to steady me, crawled out above the dome. 
There was room for my feet beside his. I 
heard him laughing beside me. 

"Don't break off that pole, I've got to 
climb it." 

I looked down. The curving ribs of the 
dome ended in a shallow cornice twenty 
feet below. That was all. Far down the 
roofs of neighboring buildings lay flat and 
small in the sunlight. Like the great black 
matrix for a printed page the roofs and 
streets extended to the harbor and the hills ; 
like column rules the shallow grooves of 
avenues cut sharply the solid lines of the 
side streets. Here and there were the open 
spaces of public squares ; far off, the green 
sweep of a city park. And everywhere 
62 



SKYSCRAPER 

above the roofs wisps of steam and smoke 
lay softly on the breeze. Like crooked fin- 
gers the wharves caught the edge of the 
harbor; the water was a quivering green, 
dotted with toy boats that crossed and re- 
crossed Hke water-insects, leaving a churn 
of white behind them and a smear of smoke 
above. 

Straight down in the street the cars 
crawled jerkily in two thin lines, the 
beetle-backed roofs inch long in the dis- 
tance. And everywhere were the moving 
dots of people, swarming upon the pave- 
ment. 

It was very still. Far below, the noises 
of the street, the living cry of the city, rose 
like the murmur of a river in a deep caiion. 
Beside me, the steeple-jack leaned easily 
against the mast, his eyes watching the 
distant glimmer of the sea. I looked up 
and the slowly moving clouds seemed 

63 



AMERICA AT WORK 

suddenly to stand still, the tower took up 
the motion, and racing across the sky, the 
flagpole seemed bending to the earth. 

Down in the street I joined the crowd on 
the sidewalk, necks bent back to watch a 
tiny speck at the top of the thin shaft of 
the flagpole. 

"Pretty high up," said some one. 

"Yes," answered another, "but they're 
putting in the foundation for a higher one 
on the corner." 



VIII 

DYNAMITE 

ISOLATED and avoided, the high ex- 
plosive plant Hes half hidden in a waste 
of sloughs and sand dunes. Like the barren 
country that surrounds it, the plant itself 
seems a part of desolate nature, stunted 
and storm-beaten as the wind-swept hills. 
Against the straight line of the horizon rise 
no massive structures of steel or stone ; no 
sound of man or machine breaks the soft 
stillness ; no smoke clouds stain the blue of 
the autumn sky. Half buried in the rolling 
sand a hundred small green buildings scat- 
ter in wild disorder along winding paths 
among the scrub oaks. The voices of un- 
disturbed wild fowl rise from the fens and 
marsh land. 

6s 



AMERICA AT WORK 

In the little office at the gate I left my 
matches and put on a pair of soft wooden- 
pegged powder shoes. Outside, the faint 
flavor of last night's frost freshened the 
morning air, and above the red and yellow 
of the scrub oaks the autumn sun was shin- 
ing in a pale-blue sky. 

At my side the superintendent was ex- 
plaining the processes of manufacture I 
was soon to see, but my mind was curiously 
unresponsive ; in the peace of the morning 
air an ominous presence seemed to surround 
me; an invisible force that needed but a 
spark or the slightest impulse to awaken it, 
annihilating and devastating in its sudden 
fury. 

Beyond the office, like the letter "S" a 
high sand dune bent in a general east and 
west direction, a sweep of marsh land in 
each sheltering curve. Against the outer 
bank of its first wide crescent the small 
66 



DYNAMITE 

power plant and a row of red one-story 
buildings marked a single street. From the 
open door of the power house the rhythmic 
drone of a generator accentuated the still- 
ness. Down a track between the buildings 
a horse plodded slowly over the worn ties, 
dragging a small flatcar, the driver leaning 
lazily against one of the uprights which 
supported a dingy awning. 

The manufacture of dynamite consists of 
two separate processes, which are con- 
ducted individually up to a certain point, 
when their products meet and by their 
union the actual dynamite is produced. 
In the little buildings by the power house 
the first of these products was in course of 
manufacture. Here the fine wood dust, 
mixed with other materials, was prepared, 
an absorbent to hold the nitroglycerine 
which was being made a half-mile be- 
yond the nearest sand dune. Packed in 

67 



AMERICA AT WORK 

paper cartridges the nitroglycerine-soaked 
"dope/' or sawdust, is called by a single 
name — Dynamite. 

In two great open pans slowly revolving 
paddles were turning over and over a mass 
of wood pulp, fine and soft as snow. The 
room was warm from the sunshine on the 
low roof and the drying fires below the 
pans; there was a strong, clean smell of 
sawdust. The building was deserted ; unat- 
tended the paddles swung noiselessly with 
the low sound of well-oiled machinery. 

Inside the next building a couple of men 
were weighing great measures of white 
powder from bins along the wall. The super- 
intendent picked up a printed slip from a 
desk by the window. 

"Nitrate of soda, nitrate of ammonia, 
wood pulp, marble dust. That's the for- 
mula for this batch. Sometimes we put in 
sulphur, or flour, or magnesium carbonate. 
68 



DYNAMITE 

It's all according to what kind of explosive 
is wanted; what it's to be used for." 

Far down at the end of the Httle street 
the strong, hot smell of paraffine hung 
heavy in the air. Inside, against the walls 
of the building, the paper cartridges were 
drying; racks of waxed yellow tubes half 
filled the building. 

Here the first process of manufacture was 
completed. Stable and harmless, the fra- 
grant wood dust was being prepared for its 
union with that strange evanescent spirit 
which would endow it with powers of light- 
ning strength and rapidity. 
' With our powder shoes sinking in the 
sliding sand we climbed the path to the 
top of the hill which marked the center of 
the twisted dune. On its summit the frame 
building of the nitrater notched the sky. 
Here, in the silence between earth and 
clouds, a mighty force was seeking birth. 

69 



AMERICA AT WORK 

Perched on a high stool, an old man in 
overalls bent intently over the top of a 
great tank, his eyes fixed on a thermometer 
that protruded from its cover. Above, a 
shaft and slowly turning wheels moved 
quietly in the shadows of the roof. There 
was a splashing of churning liquid, and 
the bite of acid sharpened the air. The old 
man turned his head for a moment to nod 
to us. Below his feet a coil of pipes white 
with a thick frost rime entered the bottom 
of the tank, a cooling solution to keep the 
temperature of the churning acid within 
the limit of safety. 

As we stepped inside the doorway, the 
splashing grew louder; the bitter reek of 
the acid seemed to scorch my nostrils. 
Slowly the old man turned a valve be- 
side him and a thick trickle of glycerine 
flowed heavily into an opening in the top 
of the tank. Inside the blackened caldron 
70 



DYNAMITE 

a strange transformation was in progress. 
Were the glycerine allowed to become com- 
pletely nitrated by the acid the windows of 
the distant city would rattle in the blast 
that would surely follow. Carefully, the 
nitrating must be brought almost to that 
danger-point and abruptly arrested; so 
near, that later in the form of dynamite the 
nitrating could be instantly completed and 
the desired explosion obtained by the jar- 
ring impulse of an electric spark. Like a 
child pushing a dish to poise on the table 
edge the old man was bringing this dynamic 
mixture to a precarious balance. 

The superintendent pointed to a cistern 
filled with water behind the nitrater. 

"Before we had the brine pipes to keep 
the acid cool, it used to heat up occasion- 
ally. It gives up red fumes when it passes 
the danger-point. You ought to see the 
quick work Old Charley used to do, — 
71 



AMERICA AT WORK 

open that faucet in the nitrater to let the 
acid and glycerine dump into the cistern 
and drown; blow the alarm whistle, and 
then everybody beat it!" 

The old man looked up from the ther- 
mometer. "She's ready." 

Deliberately he climbed down from the 
stool and opened a switch behind him; the 
splashing of the paddles ceased ; the process 
was completed. 

Behind the tank an earthenware faucet 
opened into a long lead gutter that passed 
out of the building. Fascinated, I watched 
him as he slowly turned the handle. From 
the spout a stream of viscous liquid gushed 
noisily and flowed off in a sullen current. 

"Nitroglycerine," — the superintendent 
pointed his finger at the splashing stream ; 
"of course, it's impure now, mixed with 
acid. We'll see it purified in the separating- 
houses." 

72 



DYNAMITE 

I was disappointed. Vaguely I had ex- 
pected something would happen ; how could 
this dull, oily liquid be that fearful thing 
that had been represented. 

"There's enough in that trough now to 
wreck a battleship/' he added. 

Under the crest of a curving hill a half- 
mile away, was the mix house. From the 
nitrater we had followed the nitroglycerine 
through the dangerous process of its separa- 
tion from the acid, its perfect neutraliza- 
tion. Here, at last, the explosive fluid would 
assume its final form. Mixed with the ab- 
sorbent dope, in a crumby consistency it 
would become dynamite. 

The sunshine filled the little room with 
yellow light; a blue fly buzzed noisily 
against the window. Facing the flat marsh 
land the building rested in a deep cut in 
the hillside ; behind it the solid hill, on either 
side an artificial embankment or barricade 
73 



AMERICA AT WORK 

of sand and timber. In the center of the 
room was a cumbersome machine Hke an 
archaic mill for crushing grain. Hung from 
an axle revolving on a perpendicular cen- 
tral shaft, two great wooden wheels, four 
feet in diameter, rested in a circular trough ; 
a pair of giant cart wheels with broad, 
smooth tires of pine. 

There was a sound outside the building. 
Down a boardwalk that disappeared behind 
a hill in the direction of the separating- 
house, came a man pushing a square wagon 
completely covered with rubber blankets, 
— three hundred pounds of nitroglycerine. 

Swiftly the two workmen filled the circu- 
lar trough with the prepared wood pulp. 
The wagon was trundled softly into the 
room. From a tank in the corner a measure 
of brown, sweet-smelling, aromatic oil was 
mixed into the contents of the cart. 

Something was going to happen. A sud- 
74 



DYNAMITE 

den impulse to run before it was too late 
seized me. The cart was pushed beside the 
trough. From a hose in its base a heavy 
brown fluid gushed over the powdery dope. 
Slowly the steady stream became a trickle 
and ceased. 

There was a faint sound and I knew that 
the current was thrown in; the great axle 
began to revolve on the shaft. One and 
then the other, the giant wheels turned 
heavily. Under the advancing ploughs the 
brown stain of nitroglycerine faded in the 
yellow of the dope. Round and round; 
heavily the smooth wheels pressed the floc- 
culent mass, cleanly the sharp ploughs 
turned furrows behind them — Dynamite. 

I started violently at the voice of the 
superintendent. It seemed hours instead 
of minutes since this death-taunting ma- 
chine had begun ; hours in which each sec- 
ond might bring annihilation. 
75 



AMERICA AT WORK 

"It's mixed." 

The wheels ceased to revolve. With 
wooden shovels the workmen scooped the 
dynamite from the trough and pitched it 
into fiber cans, as big as barrels. 

As though built to withstand the siege 
guns of an enemy, the dugouts of the pack- 
ers faced the marsh in a long straggling line 
against the hillside. Like the mix house, 
each building sank deep into the sandbank, 
its sides protected by enveloping barricades. 

In each small cell two men were working. 
There was little talking. Silence hung heavy 
over the hills and marsh land; a strange 
blending of peace and terror that made 
harsh sounds improper and jarring to the 
senses. 

With quick dexterity the empty paper 
tubes, that I had seen manufactured when 
I first began this perilous journey, were in- 
serted in the packing-machine. An abrupt 

76 



DYNAMITE 

movement, and they were packed with dy- 
namite and laid in boxes beside the workers. 

I picked up one of the "sticks" from a 
half-filled box. " Stump Dynamite." 

Hour after hour, day after day, the filled 
boxes were trundled down the board walk 
to the magazine. "Stump Dynamite." I 
had always thought of this great industry 
as a destructive agency, of high explosives 
as carriers of death and desolation. But 
where the forests have vanished before the 
axes of the woodmen, dynamite is clear- 
ing fields for the next year's planting. In 
the black entries of the mine the undercut 
coal-face falls shattered at the blast of the 
explosives. Through the walls of mountain 
ranges it is tearing loose the solid rock, that 
trains may some day follow the level rails ; 
through blasted tunnels flows water to 
moisten the lips of a parching city; from 
ocean to ocean it has opened a giant cut 



AMERICA AT WORK 

that deep-sea vessels may carry their car- 
goes by shorter routes; deep under the 
strata of the earth's crust its sudden shock 
shakes the oil-well into life; its rending 
breath tears the red ore of iron from the 
living rock. 

Labors of Hercules ! What are the feats 
of the earthborn son of Jupiter to the mighty 
wonders accomplished by this tabloid thun- 
derbolt. Death and destruction may come 
from its sharp detonation, but for every 
life that goes out in siege or battle a hun- 
dred lives are sustained by its quiet labor in 
field or mine. 

The afternoon sun was setting behind a 
mist of autumn clouds. In the silence of the 
dunes and marsh the clear call of a bird 
sounded sharp and silver-tuned in a run of 
hurried melody. 



IX 

THE MILLS 

FROM the car-windows, as the train 
crosses the arched stone bridge, you 
can see the mills piled high above the south 
bank of the river. Vast and dingy, the 
broken roofline notches high against the 
blue Minnesota sky. Like the battlements 
of some feudal castle, the stone and brick 
walls tower upward, here and there the 
square shaft of a grain-storage tank rising 
turret-like above the roofs. At the foot of 
the cliff, although the mills seem to rise ab- 
ruptly from the very edge of the water, the 
river courses in bent and broken streams, 
diverted and trained in the harness of 
industry; through a hundred mill-races 
in thick black torrents; a white blue 
79 



AMERICA AT WORK 

shimmer over the apron-dam across the 
river. 

Gathering strength in every mile of its 
course, the great river, rising in the silent 
waters of Itasca to pour a torrent twenty- 
five hundred miles away into the Gulf of 
Mexico, pauses here for a brief minute to 
stroke into life the mighty turbines of the 
flour-mills. Above the dams that hold the 
river in check, the water, deep and silent, 
floods back between wide banks ; below the 
tail-races of the mills it spurts noisily in a 
shallow bed, far down between high bluffs 
of weathered stone. But at the falls the 
mills, silent and apparently devoid of life 
or activity, mark the measure of its flow. 
And from that ceaseless flowing energy 
comes the power to grind the grain for a 
nation's^ bread. 

Like a shelf against a wall the railroad 
tracks cling to the cliff. Above the clanking 
80 



THE MILLS 

of freight cars and the mutter of the river, 
a vibrant murmur of myriad muffled wheels , 
fills the shadow of the mills. Beside the 
tracks thin streaks of wheat gleam yellow 
on the grimy ballast. Here two great floods 
are meeting! From the flat reaches of the 
Dakotas, from the wheat lands of Minne- 
sota and the rolling fields of Montana, from 
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the banks 
of the Athabaska, the tide of grain is at the 
flood. Unceasing, mightier by far than the 
"father of waters," one hundred thousand 
freight cars, fat and heavy with their rich 
lading, are emptying the season's harvest. 
And from the shipping platforms fifteen 
million barrels of flour go out each year into 
the markets of the world. 

The freight cars are unloading. From 

the wide doors the scoops are pushing a 

stream of yellow grain. Like liquid it pours 

over the car-sills and down between the 

8i 



AMERICA AT WORK 

steel grills beside the tracks. Never has 
the touch of human hands defiled it. Born 
of the soil, it has been reaped and winnowed 
by the clean blades of wood and steel; never 
in the long process which will transform it 
into flour, will the touch of man's hand 
stain its perfect purity. 

From bins below the tracks, endless con- 
veyors were already gathering the grain 
in a long flow upward, up above the mill- 
roofs, far up to the tops of giant elevators, 
there to fall, a vast measured treasure, into 
the storage tanks beneath. With the assist- 
ant head miller, I climbed slowly to the 
top. The windows were misted with the 
dust of harvest, and even at that great 
height there was a fine powder of ivory 
flour on the floor and ledges. He pushed up 
a window. In the warm afternoon sunlight 
the mill-roofs lay below me. Far down be- 
yond, the river, blue and sparkling, swirled 
82 



THE MILLS 

in soft eddies about the dams and forebays. 
Beyond, the city stretched away to the 
roUing green of the low hills. And above 
was the blue of a cloudless sky. 

Here, almost two hundred and fifty years 
ago, the captive Hennepin dedicated to his 
patron, St. Anthony of Padua, these falls 
where for so many years, in a cavern be- 
neath, had dwelt that Great Unk-te-hee 
who created both man and earth. Gone is 
the guileful father of the RecoUets ; gone are 
the Sioux, whose tepees clustered about the 
cataract ; gone even is that sheer leap of the 
river down forty feet, where now the low 
slant of the apron-dam smooths the water 
in its descent. The ranges of the buffalo are 
rich with golden grain. It pours through 
the grills beside the elevators. From the 
skein of mazing tracks the wail of a freight 
engine shrills loud and clamorous. 

A conveyor was lifting grain from one 

83 



AMERICA AT WORK 

of the tanks; on an endless belt it passed 
through a long high-swung gallery from 
the elevators to the mill. We followed to 
watch its progress. At the far end of the 
gallery the crawling belt with its steady 
rivulet of grain entered the top floor of the 
mill and disappeared in a ponderous ma- 
chine. Above the roar of belts and wheels 
the miller called to me. His hand was filled 
with stones and nails and little flakes of 
wood, a heterogeneous mass of refuse. Here 
the grain was cleaned, all foreign impurities 
removed. Across the low ceiling, up and 
down, slanting at every angle, the "legs," 
long boxlike tubes through which the flour 
is carried from floor to floor, cluttered the 
great room. Down the center a battery of 
strange objects, bristling with rings of pipes 
like spokes in a row of rimless wheels, flut- 
tered with unseen life. They looked like a 
misshapen organ, and I half expected to 

84 



THE MILLS 

hear the notes of some strange music echo 
from the pipes. The dust-collectors. 

On the floor below, the maze of the legs 
grew more bewildering. Here the purifiers 
were ranged in mighty companies, and the 
fine white smoke of flour tinged the air. 
Like soft snow it dusted my shoulders. 
The miller pushed back a slide in one of 
the machines; within, a reel of silk was 
slowly turning, and through its fine meshes 
the flour sifted continuously. He scooped 
up a handful and held it out to me. It 
seemed fine and white, but the grinding and 
purifying were only half completed. 

Every machine was in quiet motion. 
But the mill seemed deserted. On the vast 
floors a few men wandered in and out 
among the machines. In the mellow half- 
light and the comparative stillness, un- 
aided, almost unattended, these stolid 
workers of wood and steel performed their 
8s 



AMERICA AT WORK 

laborious functions. In the apparent con- 
fusion of a perfect system, all natural order 
seemed reversed : up a floor or two through 
the twisting legs, the flour flowed to the 
next machine, then back again, and again 
up to a higher floor. It was incomprehen- 
sible. The scheme was lost in the multiplic- 
ity of operations. 

The monotony of the murmuring ma- 
chines was suddenly broken. Wearied of 
only the silent turning of hidden wheels, a 
roomful of huge barrel-like creatures sus- 
pended between roof and floor had burst 
suddenly into impassioned life. Reeling 
and swaying like drunken dancers, the 
bolters vibrated with angry tumult. In their 
allotted places they dizzily shook their 
dusty sides, flinging madly about in a ro- 
tary motion. 

The days of the big mill-stones have van- 
ished; corrugated steel-rolls have usurped 
86 



THE MILLS 

their places. In aisles, the roller-mills filled 
the floor, like stocky pianos in a salesroom. 
Between the fine teeth of the long steel rolls 
the clean grain flaked to flour. Here a series 
crushed the outer husk of the wheat berry; 
another battery ground fine the clean meal ; 
and still others there were, each grinding 
finer and finer, endlessly. And between 
these grindings came the processes I had 
seen above, scouring, bolting, separating, 
and purifying. 

Beyond the open doors of the shipping 
platforms long lines of freight cars were 
waiting, half filled with sacks and barrels of 
flour. Here at last was life and activity. In 
white caps and uniforms the millers were 
packing the finished product. Between 
high-piled sacks, trucks trundled noisily. 
The floor was white with flour. On slow- 
moving belts the filled sacks passed out 
from beneath machines which filled and 
87 



AMERICA AT WORK 

weighed the contents to the fraction of an 
ounce. With long looping stitches the sew- 
ers fastened the tops. 

Beside the door two huge mill-stones lay 
half buried in the earth. With the wander- 
ing father of the Recollets, they were al- 
ready but memories of a mighty past. Be- 
hind the city the sun had set in a strong, 
clear, yellow light. Up in the mill-windows, 
electric lights were twinkling. The night 
run had begun. Ceaselessly, day and night, 
forever, to grind corn for a nation's bread. 



T 



X 

TELEPHONE 

HERE was a continuous sound of 
many voices; a steady cadence in 
which no individual note dominated ; a hun- 
dred women's voices incessantly repeating 
brief sentences with a rising inflection at 
the end, each sentence lost in the continuous 
tumult of sound. In a long line, perched on 
high stools, they sat before the black panels 
which rose behind their narrow desk. Into 
the transmitters — hung from their necks — 
they articulated their strange confused cho- 
rus. And apparently without relation to the 
words they uttered, a hundred pairs of hands 
reached back and forth across the panels, 
weaving interminably a never-to-be-com- 
pleted pattern on its finely checkered face. 

89 



AMERICA AT WORK 

On the panels a thousand Httle lights 
blinked white and disappeared. Tiny sparks 
of ruby and green flashed and were gone. 
Untiring, the white stars flickered in and 
out, and behind them raced the tireless 
hands, weaving a strange pattern with the 
long green cords. And unbroken, unintelli- 
gible, the murmur of the girls' voices vi- 
brated unceasingly. 

Outside, under the gray sky of a rainy 
day, the life of the city was at the flood. 
Over slim wires, buried in conduits below 
the trampled street, or high strung, swing- 
ing in the rising wind, the voices of a thou- 
sand people told their thousand messages 
to waiting ears. A passing thought, per- 
haps, that you would have me hear ; with a 
single movement you lift the transmitter 
from the hook beside you ; white flashes the 
tiny lamp on the black panel; a girl's hand 
sweeps across the board and plugs in the 
90 



TELEPHONE 

connection. Space, useless, is swept aside; 
though actual miles may intervene I am 
suddenly beside you. 

Messages of business that can make or 
ruin, death, love, infidelity, appeal! Auto- 
matically, surely, she weaves back and 
forth across the panels. Clotho, Lachesis, 
and Atropos, — Parcae of the switchboard ! 

Here is the throbbing pulse of the city 
bared and visible. Night is over; with rap- 
idly increasing frequency the flashing drops 
of light indicate that the activity of day has 
begun. Every action must be expressed in 
words, and, bared and concentrated, that 
word-current of the city rises like a gather- 
ing wave. From ten in the morning to five 
minutes after, the tide is at the flood. The 
flicker of lights is dazzling ; the girls' hands 
race dizzily behind their flashing summons. 
Business is at its height. But here on an- 
other row of panels the occasional flash of 
91 



AMERICA AT WORK 

lights offers a curious contrast: this is a 
panel for a part of the residence district; 
from seven to eight in the evening its lights 
will glow with activity. Then business is 
over and the downtown panels will be dark- 
ened. Here is a visual shifting of scene and 
interest. Work over, the social engagements 
are made, and business is forgotten. There 
is a friendly gossiping along the wires. 

Night has come, and a dozen girls watch 
the long, deserted boards. Like the occa- 
sional glimmer of a cab lamp late upon the 
street, the signals, one by one, flash and are 
gone. The world is fast asleep. Far down 
at the end of the panel a signal brightens. 
" Number please .? " — " Police ! " It was a 
woman's voice. From the card index "Cen- 
tral" picks out the street address which cor- 
responds to the number, and the nearest sta- 
tion is advised of the call. Had the woman 
no time to finish her message? There is 
92 



TELEPHONE 

another light burning on the panel. Al- 
ready she is forgotten and the slim hands 
are making another connection. Police or 
doctor, — the night calls are laden with 
portent. 

What interests the world to-day? Does 
something disturb the minds of men .? The 
flashing panels answer. As surely as the 
sun will rise to-morrow will the increased 
throb of light betray the fevered interest of 
mankind. Five o'clock! usually there is a 
slacking up, but not to-day. Heavier than 
at the busiest five minutes in the whole 
twenty-four hours, come the calls for con- 
nections. Did the White Sox win their 
game ^ It is the final of the series. Who was 
elected? Politics to-day runs high. War? 
The troops are off; marines have landed! 
Strikes, fires, or the sinking ship ; the racing 
hands weave faster; the steady hum of the 
girls' voices accelerates almost impercep- 
93 



AMERICA AT WORK 

tibly. Here beats the pulse upon the sur- 
face ; they know its normal rise and fall ; by 
its fevered beat they can read diversion or 
disaster. 

Back over the years the superintendent 
recalled the various events which had been 
dramatically visualized on the switchboard 
panels. Twelve years ago, about; the pan- 
els were fewer then. It was almost five 
o'clock in the afternoon; in a quarter of 
an hour the day operators would be leav- 
ing, tired from their long labor at the board. 
The lights were flashing slowly, perfectly 
recording the slackened beat of business. 
Five minutes to five, — a wave of white 
light seemed to flare across the downtown 
panels, suddenly, unexpectedly. Ignorant 
of the cause, the girls plugged in the de- 
sired connections. Every one seemed to be 
calling out to the residence sections. For 
a brief minute there was a pause — The 
94 



TELEPHONE 

flood of light was gone as abruptly as it had 
come. Then Hke a flame across the resir 
dence panels gleamed the signals, calling 
back, a hundredfold, back to the stores and 
offices. 

The men had heard first the terrible 
rumor. Their messages across the wires to 
their homes had sought the answer to their 
first thought that she, that they, were safe. 
And then back, in anguished women's 
voices, came frantic appeals for names of 
the missing. For long hours through the 
night the white-faced girls held to their 
posts; and in their tired eyes the signals 
burned feverishly. That night Chicago 
shuddered in its grief, — for in the flames 
of the Iroquois Theatre, at a holiday mati- 
nee, had gone out the lives of countless 
women, men, and little children. 



XI 

FROM A THOUSAND HILLS 

IT was two o'clock in the afternoon, but 
already the gray sky of a raw March day 
seemed to carry a somber twilight. A west 
wind filled the heavy air with the smoke 
and grime of the city, a dark pall through 
which shone dimly the lights in the office 
windows. Dearborn Street, black with 
melting slush and congested with noonday 
traffic, roared its deep, masculine mono- 
tone, the clangor of street cars and the 
shrill whistles of the traffic policemen rising 
in higher harmony sharply above the 
steady resonance. To the east, beneath the 
black structure of the Elevated, the lake 
gleamed a white square at the street end, 
cold and cheerless. 

96 



FROM A THOUSAND HILLS' 

Five miles from the business district, a 
deserted tract in the center of the crowded 
city, lie the stockyards. Beyond the wide 
gate a road stretches indefinitely into the 
distance. On either side, above the high 
fences, rises here and there the irregular 
mass of great brick buildings, breaking de- 
fiantly the perfect level of acre upon acre of 
fenced inclosures. As I entered the gate a 
couple of men on horseback, riding with the 
ease of cowboys, galloped past me; their 
boots and silver spurs branding them just 
in from the plains with a trainload of cattle. 

In the office of the packing plant, lights 
were burning. Behind a desk a man nodded 
at my request and called a guide, and to- 
gether we passed through a door in the far 
end of the room. Low, heavily timbered 
roofs, floors soft with sawdust, and the yel- 
low gleam of occasional incandescent lights 
shining dimly in the gloom of the building 
97 



AMERICA AT WORK 

seemed suddenly to fill me with a sense 
of vast, uninhabited places. We stopped 
for a minute before a long table piled high 
with hams and slabs of meat. Two men 
were working behind it; silently, swiftly, 
and automatically. With the regularity 
of clockwork a thin, small-featured man 
stabbed each piece of meat as it passed 
before him and sniffed at the sharp steel 
skewer as he drew it forth. At the end of 
the table his companion, a great German in 
a white linen suit, branded the smooth 
black slabs on a white-hot die which 
gleamed from the table top. 

"That's the government inspector," ex- 
plained the guide; "smells every piece. He 
can tell with his eyes shut if anything that 
ain't A number i comes by." 

Slowly we climbed the slippery stairs to 
the fourth floor of the building. At the 
stairhead some high windows swept the 

98 



FROM A THOUSAND HILLS 

acres of yards below them. Almost as far as 
the eye could see extended, like a giant 
checkerboard, the streets and avenues of 
pens and inclosures. In smooth curves, 
railroad tracks twisted and bent with a 
glint of worn steel rails. Far off a locomo- 
tive shot suddenly a burst of white steam 
against the sky and the long train of cattle- 
cars behind it clanked into life. In the 
pens there was a restless moving of the 
backs of countless animals as they wan- 
dered back and forth from barrier to bar- 
rier, a constant motion that seemed to make 
the whole yard eddy like the shifting sur- 
face of a dark-brown sea. A confused sound 
of shuffling hoofs and doleful lowing hung in 
the air, and above all that great sea of life 
rose pungent the smell of a myriad ani- 
mals. 

From the pens below a long string of cat- 
tle moved slowly up an inclined roadway 
99 



AMERICA AT WORK 

against the side of the building, which in 
gradual ascents and planes reached finally 
the floor on which I stood. Behind the 
slow-moving beasts a half-dozen men, like 
yapping terriers, goaded them from the 
rear. Aiding in their own destruction they 
were slowly climbing to the slaughter-house 
on the top of the building, whence the meat 
would descend by gravity from floor to floor 
to be cured, packed or dressed, and finally 
loaded into the waiting cars. 

There was a smell of warm, fresh blood 
in the slaughter-house. From a gallery 
against the wall I looked down over a wide 
room dim in the pale glow of scattered 
lights. The cement floor was black with 
water and darker streaks, and the rubber 
boots of the workmen glistened in the wet. 
There was a clatter of hoofs and the shouts 
of men. Into a long, narrow pen on the far 
side crowded a score of steers, dazed and 

lOO 



FROM A THOUSAND HILLS 

stumbling on each other in a panic of fear, 
their nostrils dilated at the smell of blood. 
On the platform above the pen the men ran 
back and forth, separating the cattle until 
they were evenly distributed into a long 
line. Then gates were lowered and the 
pen became divided into a dozen compart- 
ments. Along the platform two men with 
great sledges advanced from pen to pen. A 
long, clean swing of mighty arms, the dull 
knock of the sledge against a skull, and at 
each stroke a steer crumpled with a clatter 
of hoofs and disappeared. In a minute it 
was ended; the front side of the pen was 
lifted and the great limp bodies were 
dragged out with chains and tackle. 

In the five minutes which followed a 
dozen men with long, thin knives stripped 
the hides, hoofs and entrails from the steam- 
ing bodies. Almost before I realized it, it 
was over; a man with a hose was washing 

lOI 



AMERICA AT WORK 

the floor; the slaughtered carcasses were 
being wheeled away, and into the pen an- 
other bunch of cattle were crowding and 
sniffing the heavy air. 

It was night when I left the building. 
Against the low clouds the sudden flares of 
light from the open hearths of the steel 
mills gleamed like summer lightning. As I 
walked out through the gate into the glare 
of the crowded street there came from the 
darkness behind me the low, far-off wail of a 
steer, and then, faint and distant, another 
answered it. 



A 



XII 

CONCRETE 

CROSS the street the vast frame of 



a concrete office building is climbing 
steadily skyward. Reinforced with rods 
of steel and lacing wire the gray white stone 
seems endowed with a strength and perma- 
nency for all eternity. Each week the con- 
fining boards that mould the concrete are 
stripped from the topmost story and a new 
section is revealed; above, the scaffolding 
and moulds are replaced and I watch and 
wait for the next disclosure of its steady 
progress. 

What is this substance that has enabled 
men to mould, in monolithic form, struc- 
tures which defy the wearing touch of pass- 
ing years ; what is this man-made stone that 
103 



AMERICA AT WORK 

until to-day the ages only have been able 
to produce? The roots which bind the 
building to the bedrock are made of it; the 
building which lifts its mass above them 
is born of it; street and sidewalk in the 
crowded city, the dam which checks a 
mighty river in its course, and the humble 
cattle-trough in the farmer's barnyard are 
moulded perfect from its mutable sub- 
stance. Plastic, tractable, it flows into the 
waiting moulds to solidify, in forms that 
only years of patient labor with natural 
stone could produce. Flawless and beauti- 
ful in form and texture it lends itself to a 
thousand purposes. An age of concrete is 
at hand. 

Like giant train-sheds the buildings of 
the cement mills loom, half hidden in a 
cloud of dust that drifts and eddies like 
snow about the roofs, low-lying between 
earth and sky. 

104 



CONCRETE 

Beyond the gateway, the buildings di- 
vide into two main groups separated by a 
sweep of open ground. There is no sign of 
life ; no sound except a distant rumbling like 
the grinding wheels of the freight trains 
beyond the gate. As though shod in flannel 
my feet sink softly in the dust; already 
my clothes are powdered with it, a dull, 
gray, impalpable dust of infinite fineness. 

The interest in this vast industry lies 
principally in the future uses of its prod- 
uct. Its transmutation from the living 
rock of incalculable ages to a form which 
may be reverted to an adamant consistency, 
guided and controlled, is simply a long 
series of heating and grinding processes 
that are striking chiefly for the tremendous 
nature of the machinery involved. In the 
gloom of the buildings a disintegration of 
the very bone of the earth was in progress. 
From a slender trestle behind the mills 



AMERICA AT WORK 

strings of cars cast down a clattering 
shower of broken stone, fresh from the 
quarry's deep incision; and on the loading 
platforms the finished cement was being 
loaded into box-cars — cities in sacks and 
barrels. 

The roar of grinding stone vibrated in 
the air. Through clouds of motionless dust 
occasional lights gleamed dully, like ship's 
lamps in a fog. Almost ankle-deep in places 
the cement covered the floors and rested in 
soft mounds on stairsteps and girders. Far 
off in the semi-darkness the shapes of men 
appeared and were gone. 

Before me, stretching entirely across the 
width of the building, the first of a long 
line of drying-kilns blocked my passage 
with its giant body. A dozen feet in di- 
ameter, it rested at a slight angle, one end 
lifted a few feet above the other. Rumbling 
dully, below the shrill clatter of the grind- 
io6 



CONCRETE 

ing rock, they revolved slowly on their 
carriages, while through their intensely 
heated interiors a torrent of broken stone 
tumbled over and over in gradual descent 
to the openings in their lower ends. At the 
base of each kiln a jet of flame gleamed a 
warm cherry through the dust as it shot its 
incandescent stream into the base of the 
revolving tube. Cold and lifeless the broken 
stone poured into the upper end from the 
crowded hoppers; white with heat it tum- 
bled, a piercing, gleaming torrent from the 
base of the kiln. 

Cooled and blackened the dried stone 
passed on from the drying-kilns to the 
crushing-mills, steel monsters that ground 
it to powder with a clanking reverberation. 

High above the kilns, on a great plat- 
form beside the storage hoppers, the crush- 
ing-mills that I had heard since I first en- 
tered the building stretched off into gloom. 
107 



AMERICA AT WORK 

As though seized with a frenzy of labor, 
they writhed and shook in an excess of mo- 
tion ; black Cyclops beating the very rock to 
dust beneath their iron-shod feet. Loud as 
I shouted, my voice was lost in the smash- 
ing roar of their foot-beats ; my body quiv- 
ered with the vibration of their agonized 
labor. 

Blended with the powder of other stones 
in the mixing-hoppers, the endless stream 
passed on to the tube mills, where pebbles 
of flint beat it to a finer consistency. Like 
gray flour, the endless belts bore it in a 
slender stream to the waiting bins. 

In the burning-building another battery 
of kilns like those in the drying-room with- 
ered the powdered dust to clinkers. Above 
me, the black bellies of the kilns, reaching 
from wall to wall, turned slowly with a 
steady motion, great cylinders of steel re- 
volving gently between giant fingers. Red 
io8 



CONCRETE 

through the dust burned the Hght of the 
flame blasts at their bases. Through blue 
glasses I peered up into the slanting tube, 
— as the burning tunnel of a mine it seemed 
redolent with heat and flame. 

In the finishing-mill were repetitions of 
previous processes by which the clinker was 
resolved again to the fine powder of the 
finished cement. Like millers, white with 
flour, occasional workers passed among the 
machines ; but it is not men that I remem- 
ber, rather a feeling of their absence, — 
an impression of vast machinery auto- 
matically and ceaselessly performing its 
perfect functions. 

Even the sampling had been reduced 
to an automatic process. Fascinated, I 
watched a slender arm of steel that dipped at 
perfect intervals a sample from a moving 
belt, lifted it high, swallowed it, and paused, 
waiting the moment for a repetition of the 
109 



AMERICA AT WORK 

act. Somehow, through that sHm arm, the 
tiny handfuls of cement passed out in reg- 
ular order to the laboratories in a distant 
building, where with scales and test tube 
the destroying touch of centuries was con- 
centrated in a few days or hours of grueling 
test. 

From the storage building the waiting 
cars were being loaded with sacks and bar- 
rels of cement. For ten thousand years 
man has toiled to build for perpetuity. 
Rotted and gone with the dust of ages are 
the temples of antiquity. The great blocks 
of the pyramids stand in their places de- 
faced and worn by the winds of centuries; 
stone alone endures. But in these sacks 
and barrels rested a new and magic sub- 
stance, the stone of the future ages; no 
blast or chisel is called upon to cleave it ; in 
its fine texture will be none of the imperfec- 
tions of the natural parent; no crack or flaw 
no 



CONCRETE 

will break its even texture. Nor is strength 
or skill required to mould it to its everlast- 
ing form. Firm rooted to the ribs of the 
earth it will carry the weight of lofty mono- 
liths; through its smooth base new rivers 
will bear water to the city's mouth. Be- 
neath sea and land, on the lonely farm and 
the crowded city street, this mutable sub- 
stance has proved its right everlastingly 
to endure in imperishable concrete. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



A YEAR IN A COAL-MINE 



By JOSEPH HUSBAND 



" Mr. Husband enables the reader to carry 
away a vitalized impression of a coal-mine, its 
working and its workers, and a grasp of vivid 
details." — San Francisco Chronicle, 

" It is a story of vivid and compelling interest 
and every word bears the impress of truth." — 
Living Age. 

" Apart from its informative value, this is a 
book that no one can fail to enjoy." — Phila- 
delphia Press, 

" A refreshingly frank narrative." — New 
York Sun, 

With frontispiece. $i.io net. Postage 9 cents. 



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ARE WE READY? 

By H. D. WHEELER 
With an introduction by 
Maj.-Gen. Leonard Wood. 

A sane, constructive study of our preparedness 
for war, in which the strength and weakness of 
our present system are pointed out and specific 
plans are proposed for the formation of a citi- 
zen army. 

Beginning with an absorbing narrative of an 
imaginary " attack on New York," the author 
shows the present situation in the regular army, 
the militia, and the navy. He then deals with 
our traditional military policy, what it contem- 
plates and how it has been applied ; with "the 
militia," its history, function, organization, 
equipment, and its one great weakness; with 
militarism vs, democracy, making illuminating 
comparisons of the military situation in the 
United States with that in Switzerland and in 
Australia ; — and concludes with two very im- 
portant chapters in which he proposes certain 
concrete administrative and legislative reforms. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



BOOKS BY ENOS A. MILLS 

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WONDERLAND 

In this, as in his earUer books, Mr. Mills's fresh, 
graphic descriptions of mountain, lake, and forest are 
varied with thrilling incidents of perils and adven- 
tures met with in the vast wilderness. But the chief 
impression left on the reader is that of a wonderland 
of lofty mountains, natural parks, gem-like lakes, 
alpine flower-gardens, and streams full of trout await- 
ing the angler. The book contains withal a deal of 
keen, original observation on the habits of the Rocky- 
Mountain forests and the ways of the wild folk that 
roam through them and that inhabit the vast treeless 
tracts above timber-line. 

IN BEAVER WORLD 

"A fascinating nature book — one that must be 
classed with those of Burroughs and Muir in original 
observation." — Chicago Record-Herald. 

WILD LIFE IN THE ROCKIES 

"An uncommonly interesting and graphic description of 
life in the Rocky Mountains." — Springfield Republican. 

THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES 

"Gives a clearer idea of the Rockies, their trees, flowers, 
plant life, birds, and beasts than may be gleaned from any 
other volume of its kind." — Lincoln {Neb.) Star, 

Each, fully illustrated, $1.75 net. 



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THE CLARION 



By Samuel Hopkins Adams 



The story of an American city, the men who con- 
trolled it, the young editor who attempted to reform 
it, and the audacious girl who helped sway its desti- 
nies. 

**A vivid and picturesque story." — Boston Tran- 
script. 

" One of the most important novels of the year — 
a vivid, strong, sincere story." — New Orleans Times- 
Picayune. 

" A tremendously interesting novel — vivid and 
gripping." — Chicago Tribune. 

" One of the most interestingly stirring stories of 
modern life yet published . . . vividly told and of 
burning interest." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

Illustrated. $1.35 net. 



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THE DIPLOMACY OF 
THE WAR OF 1914 

1. The Beginning of the War 

By ELLERY C STOWELL 

This, the first of three volumes which are to 
trace the entire diplomatic history of the war, is 
perhaps the most complete, authoritative, and 
impartial account of the subject yet written. 
Pushing aside the web of contradictions in 
which partisans of both sides have veiled the 
issues, the author analyzes the official docu- 
ments with the skill and experience of an ac- 
complished international lawyer and specialist 
in diplomatic history, showing the fundamental 
relations of the powers and preserving always 
the thread of exceedingly complicated nego- 
tiations. The volume culminates in a discus- 
sion of the violation of Belgian neutrality, 
and after a searching analysis of the cases of 
England and of Germany, the author closes 
with a study of the interests of the United 
States in the war. A most suggestive chapter 
of questions and answers, a carefully prepared 
chronology of events, and an index make the 
book as useful for study or reference as it is 
interesting to read. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



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